


Child Soldiers

by birdzilla



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7691218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdzilla/pseuds/birdzilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allura knows that her paladins are young, but not how young. It turns out to be a difficult revelation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child Soldiers

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to [a prompt](https://voltron-kink.dreamwidth.org/1161.html?thread=39817#cmt39817) on the Voltron kink meme. The original prompt was:
>
>> Altaens, like humans, have/had strict ideas of what is age appropriate, I.e. child soldiers are a Bad Thing in their culture.
>> 
>> Age of maturity is similar on both worlds.
>> 
>> Allura had no idea that most of her new paladins were not even twenty rotations of their world yet. (Shiro IS older, dammit. Him not being early twenties AT LEAST makes NO sense!)
>> 
>> Cue angst when she has it explained to her. And she is especially conflicted because she knows can't afford to go any easier on the paladins just because she now knows they're not adults.
> 
> I've made slight edits to the story for clarity and to place it more firmly in the first season's timeline. It does contain serious spoilers through episode 9, as well as a minor/implied spoiler for something revealed in episode 11!

Allura knew that her paladins had needed some time to adjust to the galactic conflict they had been flung into. She knew that they'd still been in military training at home; she couldn't expect half-trained soldiers to be perfect warriors right off the bat. She also knew now that she hadn't been helping at the beginning, when she rode them too hard and expected them to be the warriors and paladins she'd known as a child. But they were adjusting, and now, most days, she could see them growing into the polished paladins they would someday be, their true potential shining through.

Some days, though, it was all rough and no diamond.

"Look! I know I left it right here!" Pidge was saying, stabbing her finger down on an empty spot amid the clutter of electronics she'd piled on a couch in the lounge. "I left it right here last night, and I told you all not to touch it!"

"It wasn't me!" Lance held his hands up. "It was probably Hunk."

The accusation wasn't unfounded, since Allura had noticed the yellow paladin had a certain cavalier attitude towards personal privacy and private property, but this time Hunk looked offended. "No, you were in the middle of taking a reading. I wanted to borrow it, but I was going to wait until you were done. I wanted to see the readout first."

"So it wasn't me and it wasn't Hunk." Lance folded his arms and pinched his chin between his thumb and fingers, clearly posing, though Allura had no idea what his pose was supposed to mean. "That can only leave...." His eyes narrowed, and he turned slowly towards the couch in the corner, dropping his hand to point accusingly. "Keith!"

"Huh?" Keith lowered the datapad he'd been reading and glared back. "Why would I touch that hunk of space junk?"

"It wasn't space junk!" Pidge shouted, rounding on him. "It was an alien data cube, and it could have had valuable information about Galra tactics and movements on it! And someone took it! I know one of you did it, and if I don't get it back right now, I'll-"

"Enough!" All four heads swiveled towards her. Allura hadn't meant for her shout to come out so strained, but her voice kept catching still, days after the Galra virus in the castle systems and the havoc it had caused. She struggled to sound more royal as she went on. "You all ought to be treating each other with more courtesy and respect. You are all adults here, and I would appreciate it if you acted like it!"

"Welllll, _technically_ , we're not," Lance said, waving a hand flippantly and going on as if he hadn't just said something shocking. "It's not a big deal, Princess, Pidge is probably just on the rag-"

Hunk grabbed him and slammed a hand over his mouth, muffling whatever else he had to say, while Pidge went red and made fists at her side and Keith set the datapad down and sat up straighter as if ready to run. Neither the nonsense words nor the reaction, which otherwise would have been grounds for curiosity, truly registered.

" _Technically_ you're not adults?" Allura repeated, presuming she'd misheard.

"Shiro's the only one over eighteen," Keith said. "I'm seventeen, and I'm pretty sure Lance and Hunk have to be sixteen, since I was the oldest in our class." He gave Pidge a doubtful look.

She scowled. "I'm sixteen, too. I'm just short."

Allura found herself unexpectedly short of breath. The numbers they were giving were all wrong. The paladins seemed to have approximately the same concept of time as Altaea, and on Altaea, no one would possibly entrust a weapon to a child under twenty. Then again, Allura remembered, their 'seconds' were faster than ticks--maybe their years were longer. Not every planet circled their sun at the same rate. That had to be it.

"Princess?" Hunk asked, looking at her uncertainly.

Allura turned about and left the room. She had to talk to her father- no. She had to talk to Shiro.

***

"Allura!" Shiro was sitting on one of the Black Lion's front paws when Allura entered the hangar, but he looked up and smiled warmly at her as soon as the doors opened. The Black Lion lowered her head slightly and made a whirring noise.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," Allura said. She felt a bit guilty at walking in on what was clearly bonding time with his lion.

Shiro shook his head. "Not at all. I think she's saying hi."

"Then hello to you too," Allura said, smiling up at the lion. The smile dropped off her face again when she looked down at Shiro, though. She'd remarked before that he was the tallest of the paladins, but thought nothing of it. Now she wondered if that height was natural species variation, or a mark of greater age.

"Is something wrong?" Shiro was frowning now. He pushed himself off the Black Lion's paw and stood up, stepping towards her. "Is there Galra activity we need to know about?"

"No! It's nothing to do with the Galra."

Allura's stomach flipped over, but his frown was deepening. If she didn't explain why she'd come here, he'd come up with another disaster. Not that this wasn't a disaster of its own, but--it was surely a mistake, it had to be. She just had to get Shiro to clear up the confusion for her. She gave him a shaky smile.

"I'd been talking to the paladins in the lounge," she said, editing out the fight she'd intervened in, "and Lance and Keith were saying something that was confusing me about ages. There must be a difference in how quickly our planets circle their respective suns."

"You probably want to ask Pidge about that," Shiro said. He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. "I've never been good with the science end of things."

"That's probably all it is," Allura said, relaxing in the face of his sheepishness. "None of you could have become cadets in your 'Galaxy Garrison' without being adults."

"Actually, I'm the only one over eighteen," Shiro said, echoing Keith's words. "The Galaxy Garrison does two years of strictly classroom and simulator training for cadets, so most people enter at sixteen. They aren't put into real ship training until their third year, so everyone's an adult by then. And no one's put on a hazard or combat assignment until they're at least twenty-one."

"You mean they really are still children?" Allura asked, aghast. "They wouldn't be ready for combat for more five years?"

"Yes." Shiro looked serious now, and a little uncomfortable; Allura couldn't tell if he was uncomfortable admitting it, or uncomfortable with the way she knew she was looking at him. "Back home, I would have lost my rank for letting them fight. But we didn't have much choice, did we? The lions chose them, and the Galrans were right on our tail."

Well, the Blue Lion had chosen Lance, though now Allura couldn't fathom why, but the others--she had chosen _for_ the lions, hadn't she? They had accepted her choices, but she had been the one who had assigned them to the lions, had sent them out to find and bond themselves to the galaxy's greatest weapons. She was short of breath again; she tried to breathe in more deeply, and choked on a sob.

"Allura?" Shiro asked.

Eyes watering, Allura spun about and fled the hangar before he could see her cry.

***

She didn't realize until she was halfway across the bridge that she was headed for her father's room. Or rather, the room that was no longer her father's room, since the AI of her father--the last shadow of him, the illusion that he was still there to be her guide--was gone, forever. Allura knew there was nothing left for her in that empty room, but she went in anyway. Crossing to the far wall, she leaned against it and then slid down, until she was sitting on the floor and hugging her knees in front of her.

They were children. They were children, and Allura had given them to the lions and asked them to go into battle for her. She'd thrown them into firefights and demanded that they form Voltron, again and again. She'd given them the bayards. She'd made them train to fight. She'd sent them onto Galra ships. Again and again, she'd put them in danger.

She wished, desperately, that her father was here. She wished she could have turned the program on and spoken to him; it might have been only a program, but it had contained all of his knowledge, all that could be digitized of his heart. He would know what to say, and what to do with this new knowledge.

And he could have held her while she thought about it.

It wasn't as if she'd had a choice, a part of her whispered. Without Voltron, the entire universe was doomed to Galra domination. The Erusian village near the castle never could have produced viable paladin candidates; they hadn't developed steam power, never mind flight. When fate had presented her with five fit and good-hearted paladins, it hadn't been presenting them as a _choice_.

But the rest of her insisted that that was all justification. It was easy to say that it had all been rigged now that she was looking back at her choices; it was easier to say that than to say that she'd been wrong. She should have investigated her paladins before she'd chosen them. Even matching their personalities to their lions had been mostly guesswork, watching the way they looked at each other and how they touched and stood--a few hours' conversation might have revealed many things, their true ages among them. She'd acted hastily, letting despair at her lost world and a desperate desire to right that ancient wrong guide her impulses instead of taking more thought.

And then she'd treated them so poorly afterwards, too. _"That combat simulator was set at a level fit for an Altaen child."_ Allura's own words came back to her, from that very early training when she'd pushed so hard, and the air was suddenly chill on her burning face. To mock them like that, when they actually _were_ children, themselves-

The door opened, and she looked up to see Shiro standing in the doorway. He looked around for a moment before he saw her, half-hidden by the remains of the control panel in the center of the room, and started her way.

"Allura. I understand why you're concerned," Shiro said. He came closer, moving slowly as if he was afraid she'd startle or lash out, and then crouched down to sit a little more than an arm's-length away. "If I'd had any choice, I wouldn't have put them in this kind of danger either."

"You could have told me," Allura said. She'd meant to give him a sharp, queenly glare, but her gaze only flickered up long enough to see the open concern on her face, and then she had to drop her eyes to the floor again. She hugged her knees a little closer. "You didn't say a thing, when I started assigning them to the rest of the lions."

"What else was I supposed to do?" Shiro sounded... more conflicted than she'd expected, given how confident he'd sounded in the hangar. "Lance had already bonded with the Blue Lion. The rest of us were the only possible paladins you had. None of us could walk away from that. If we had been able to, we never would have made it into the Galaxy Garrison in the first place."

He paused, and she heard him take a deep, noisy breath, then hold it for so long she almost checked to make sure he wasn't turning blue. At last he let it out, slow and soft. "I know that their age can compromise their judgement. That's why I took command--that's why it's my job to lead them and protect them. But they all took this on willingly. I have to respect that."

"They're children!" Allura spat the words as if expelling them could force out the bubble of guilt that had expanded in her chest. "It's not about their judgement. It's about putting them in danger. No sane Altaen would let a child take on the risks of combat, no matter what the cost. That- that was one of the things that distinguished us from the Galra, even before they started to conquer the galaxy."

"Not on the Altaea you knew," Shiro said, slow and careful, like he was edging around a precipice. "But you went into the cyrochamber before its very last days. Before it was destroyed. Once there was no escape for Altaea, would your people have been so cruel to children about to die that they wouldn't even let them fight for their own lives?"

A stabbing chill rushed through Allura, and she flung herself to her feet in a fury, glaring at Shiro. He met her eyes, instead of having the decency to look away in shame at what he'd suggested, and the fact that he looked unhappy and uncertain only made it worse. "My people would _never_ ," she said, turned her face away from him.

"Maybe not," Shiro said. She heard him hesitate behind her, the tiny movements as he rose and shifted from foot to foot, but in the end, whatever words he might have considered went unsaid. He turned and walked out, leaving Allura alone in the silent room.

"Would you, Father?" she whispered to the empty air.

She hated the way Shiro had phrased it--as if keeping their children safe, even at the end, would have been an unkindness. But at the same time, his phrasing had been compelling. In her mind's eye she could see a child Pidge's age, Pidge's size (which was ridiculous, since an Altaen of Pidge's age would be at least as tall as Lance), watching Galran soldiers approaching, with as much ferocity on her face as fear. Allura had seen Pidge fight against desperate odds more than once; would an Altaen child be less brave?

She could imagine that Altaen child, golden-skinned and silver-haired like her littlest cousin, shouldering a gun too big for her. She couldn't imagine seeing that child's courage, or the doom coming for her, and taking that gun away to preserve an innocence already about to be killed.

But that--that might have happened, at some time or another, in those days of blood and fire. What Allura had done was different. She'd taken four children under her command and handed them over to the Voltron lions. And given the nature of the lions, and the nature of their paladins, that was something that could not now be undone. The lions knew everything about their pilots already; they knew they were children, and they didn't care. Only once had the bond between lion and paladin been broken by less than death, when the Black Lion had rejected her paladin. Allura knew, from her history, that rejection could not be forced or induced.

There was no way to pull Voltron out of the war that they'd entered. The Galra would pursue the lions until either Voltron was shattered or they were. In order to keep these children--her paladins--alive, Allura realized, she had no choice but to ask them to keep fighting. They had to push the Galra back, they had to free other races and win allies in their war, and they had to be trained into the kind of indomitable warriors whom the Galra could never defeat. Trying to keep them from the battlefield _now_ would only get them killed faster.

Allura sat down on the edge of the broken console, overcome now not with guilt but with a peculiar kind of grief. The Galra would have come to her paladins' world and broken it, sooner or later. They were entering the fight younger than they should have, but they were entering it armed with strength and knowledge that their theoretical older selves, facing that invasion, would never have had. She was sure if she asked them, they would tell her that the trade-off was worth it.

"But it's not fair," she whispered. "What the Galra did, and what I did- it's not fair, Father."

The pillar that had contained the holographic projector was shattered; his AI program was deleted and gone. But Allura closed her eyes and bowed her head and imagined that she felt King Alfor's hand on her shoulder, and the warmth of his body standing close. She could almost feel his presence, just imagining it.

She sat for a long time, and when she stood, her face was wet. Pinching up her skirt, Allura wiped it dry, then marched out of the room. Her throat and head were sore from crying, and she imagined her eyes were red and swollen; her stomach was still doing unhappy flips under her ribs. But she stopped at the door and forced her spine straight and her shoulders back, wiping her face one more time.

***

"Shiro," Allura said, at the door of his room.

Shiro didn't stop in his calisthenics to look up at her. "One minute," he puffed, and she could hear him counting under his breath as he finished his exercise. "Ninety-eight... ninety-nine... all right," he said on the last one, bounding to his feet in one movement. He turned and looked at her now, and the neutral look on his face didn't hide a slight wariness in his eyes. "Did you want to come in?"

"Yes, thank you," Allura said, trying not to look around too obviously at his--disappointingly sparse--personal things as she made her way across his room to the small computer console in one corner. "I wanted to- that is, I was hoping that you'd help me look over some possible training routines for the younger paladins. There are some Altaen hand-to-hand routines in the computer that focus on self-defense and averting the opponent's force. I was trained with them, when I was younger, and I thought they might help if the paladins get caught without weapons."

"That does sound useful. Why don't you show me where they're filed?" When she looked back over her shoulder, Shiro was smiling.

Allura smiled shakily back. She couldn't protect her paladins the way she should have; she couldn't take back now what was done. And when she thought of them in their lions, she wouldn't do it if she could. But she could help them grow up into the adults they promised to become, and that would have to be good enough.


End file.
